A lesson in tenacity

I subscribe to the School of Life newsletter, which I highly recommend doing if you haven’t already. It’s genuinely insightful and a good read, with practical tips for navigating life a little more seamlessly.

Also worth a watch is their Youtube channel, which purports to teach you ‘how to live’. That’s not far off the mark… their short clips are genuinely life-enhancing. Find it here.

I mention all this because it is in their most recent newsletter that I learnt about the oldest living tree: a Spruce tree in Sweden.

It is a phenomenal 9,550 years old, which makes it older than every major religion. It predates writing by about 3,000 years and started growing at the end of the last Ice Age. To provide even more perspective: the Ancient Greek civilisation started to rise around 3,000 years ago… this tree was already 6,500 years old by the time Socrates and his crew were spouting their philosophy.

Isn’t it wonderful? So life affirming. And puts our tiny, microscopic problems into grand perspective.